One of the designers who made it happen

How Beverly Moskowitz started their other graphic design journey

Company name

Overview

We're a startup business of therapeutic and educational products for young children with fine motor, learning and sensory problems.

Our products help children learn to print, cut, draw and successfully participate in school. We are debuting our business at the American Occupational Therapy Association conference in Orlando, Florida in April 2010. Presently, we still need vital artwork to illustrate concepts. These graphics have to be child-friendly, entertaining, original and crisp. They must capture the attention of children in preschool, Kindergarten and grades 1, 2 and 3. Most importantly, they have to convey a feeling of fun, especially tricky for an activity that many kids find very difficult--handwriting.

Real OT Solutions is producing top quality 4-color, beautifully packaged and expertly designed materials. They are intended for national and international use in all public, private, parochial, and home-schooled environments.

Dr. Moskowitz is a practicing Occupational Therapist with over 30 years of experience working with children with disabilities. More than 2/3 of her career has been spent working in the schools.

Tell us a bit about who you are and the people you reach

The products containing Super C are geared for young children ages 4-9 who are learning how to print. Teachers, therapists and parents will want to use them.

Super C is a MAJOR concept in our Size Matters Handwriting Program (SMHP). SMHP is a brand new approach to teaching handwriting that has already proven successful with hundreds of kids. Super C is one of a number of teaching points that help children print letters accurately and without reversals. Reversals are common problems for young children, especially those with learning difficulties. The Super C figure will be featured throughout all the handwriting and phonics curricular materials to continually remind children which letters are Super C's.

Basically, Super C teaches children that if they can make a 'c', they can also make lower case letters 'a', 'd', 'g', 'o', 'q' and 's.' Upper case Super C letters include: C, G, O, Q and S. Like action figure super heroes, we hope to excite children about Super C so they remember his alter egos.

At one point, I surrounded a yellow happy face that had a muscled arm coming out of one side of his head with a big red C. That's something I'd still like to see developed as one possibility. But other ideas are welcomed and desired, too. We'd be interested in seeing Super C in a variety of poses (10 would be great). Consider adding legs and a cape!

Requirements

We need a unique image for the Super C character. Remember to emphasize the letter C, but personify it any way you want as long as it makes you laugh, smile or think.

Create a comic strip of 6-8 frames. Start the story line with confused children in a classroom struggling to print. Super C comes to the rescue, carrying away all their sloppy, misshapen letters and burying them with a bulldozer. Next, he teaches them the trick. First make a c, then turn it into an... a, d, g, o, q or s. The children parade around with Super C on their shoulders. Lastly, he flies away.

The 6-8 frame comic should fit an standard sheet of paper in landscape mode.

We're looking for both the comic strip pictures and the individual pictures of Super C. We need the latter alone so we can drop him into other appropriate curricular pages. The action figure of Super C should have various facial expressions and seem to be moving, sitting, standing, flying, peeking out from behind a door, etc. These action figures can be up to 10 cm long. We'll wrap our text around them.

We especially need a single tightly formed picture that can be shrunk into a 9 mm X 6 mm space above the Super C letters on the Alphabet strips in the workbook. The same figure must enlarge to 1.5 cm X 1 cm for another teaching tool being developed.